[Primaryit] Tomorrow Sport - competition for Primary and Secondary students - invitation to participate

[Paul Wright]

Dear Colleagues and apologies for the cross posts,

I am sending this email to let you know about the project we are developing called Tomorrow Sport.  I hope that you or someone at your school will be interested in participating in the pilot we will be running with this project in Term 1 this year.  
 
Tomorrow Sport is an interactive Web 2.0 based site developed by the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association (VITTA) as part of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) FUSE (Find, Use, Share, Explore) website. The FUSE site is intended to change the way teachers use technology and engage students in topics that excite them.   

Tomorrow Sport is a teams-based competition with sport as the inspiration and source material.  There is a competition for Years 7 and 8 students and another one for Years 5 and 6 students.

Teams of students complete a Challenge each week for six weeks.  While each Challenge is based on a topic related to sport, each activity involves collecting and analysing data, collaborating and producing a response, such as a graph of a slide show or making a recording. It is intended that each Challenge activity would take about one class per week.    

Teams of students are joined into the competition by their teacher. Teams will compete for the highest placing on a score ladder. 

The competition promotes mathematical/statistical literacy and is based on sports-related activities and these activities promote the development of numeracy, literacy, social and personal development, citizenship, collaborative and cooperative learning.  Each Challenge involves planning, conducting an activity, collecting data, preparing a response and uploading to the Tomorrow Sport web site. As well teams will also be required to review the work of their peers and further points will be won.  A leader board will be created each week and competition winners will eventually be announced.  We hope to have great prizes for the winning teams.

The first version of Tomorrow Sport is based on Australian Rules Football, but after the pilot we will be extending the competition to include netball, soccer, cricket and hockey.  The competition will then run a competition in three terms each year.

We have been in discussions with and will be working with other organisations including the Australian Football League, SportZstats, the National Sports Museum and ACHPER.  

We have teams of teachers/writers preparing Challenges and resource materials.  As well, they have prepared materials linking to Curriculum Standards and provided rubrics so you can use this work in as part of your teaching, learning and assessment program.  

If you are interested, then please get back to me as soon as possible.  If you have a colleague who may be interested, then please pass this message on.

We would like to hear from as many teachers in Primary and Secondary schools as possible.  In the pilot running in term 1 2011, we would like to include city and country schools, government and independent.   

Please note, if you were a delegate at the VITTA Conference in 2010, then this email will have already been sent to you.  If you have already responded, then your response has been noted and we will get back to you very soon, so you do not need to respond again.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Paul Wright
VITTA - Project Office
T: +61 3 9495 6836
F: +61 3 9495 6834
E: paulw at vitta.org.au
W: www.vitta.org.au
Suite 209, 134-136 Cambridge St,
Collingwood, VIC, 3066, Australia